Carolina Moon

welcome.”
    “When I was driving home tonight, I was thinking of you.”
    “I like the sound of that.”
    “And I was thinking, so far he’s made all the moves. I let him because I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to make any of my own, or counter any of his. It was sort of easy to be…”
    “Maneuvered?”
    “I suppose. And I was thinking, I just wonder how Kincade Lavelle would react if I got home and I fixed us a nice supper.”
    “He’d have appreciated that.”
    “Yes, well, some other time. That part of the thought process didn’t pan out. But there was this second part.”
    “Which was?”
    She lifted her head from his shoulder, met his eyes. “How would Kincade Lavelle react if after that, once we were all relaxed and quiet, just what would he do if I set out to seduce him?”
    “Well…” was all he could manage as she pressed closer, ran her hands intimately down his hips. The stirring in his blood was a not-so-quiet delight. “I think the least I can do, as a gentleman, is let you find out.”
    This time it was she who unfastened buttons, his shirt, then her own. She laid her lips over his heart, on the warm skin and vibrant beat.
    “I’ve had your taste with me since the first time you kissed me.” While her lips played over him, she eased the shirt away. “I can bring tastes back, and I’ve done that with yours so many times already.”
    She trailed her hands over his chest, his belly—a quiver—up to his shoulders. Such broad, tough shoulders. “I like the feel of you. Long, hard muscles. It excites me. And your hands, roughened from work, riding over me.” She peeled her shirt open, and let it fall to the floor to join his. Watching him, she unhooked her bra, let it slide away.
    “Touch me now.”
    He cupped her breasts in his hands, the warm, soft weight of them, skimmed the nipples with the edges of his thumbs.
    “Yes, like that.” Her head fell back as heat balled in her belly. “Exactly like that. My insides go liquid when you touch me. Can you see it?” Her eyes, long and dark, met his. “I want…”
    “Tell me.”
    She moistened her lips, reached for the button of his jeans. His hands flexed on her, one hard caress. “I want to feel what you feel. I want what’s inside you inside me. I’ve never tried that with anyone else. Never wanted to. Will you let me?”
    He bent his head, rubbed his lips over hers. “Take what you want.”
    It was a risk. She would be open, gaping, so much more defenseless than he. But she wanted it, all of it, and that exquisite bond of trust.
    Once more she lay her lips on him, and opened mind, heart, body.
    It was a bolt, a lightning strike, the power of those coupled needs, images. His desire, layered and tangled inside her with her own. It slashed through her, dark, bright, swollen with energy. Her head snapped back from the punch of it, and she came in one long erotic gush.
    “God. God. Wait.”
    “No.” He’d never experienced anything like it. The twisted bonds of unity only knotted tighter in a bold and beautiful mass of arousal. “More.” He set his teeth on her shoulder, craving flesh. “Again. Now.”
    She couldn’t stop it, it lashed through her like a storm full of fury and brilliance. It was she who dragged him to the floor, she who panted out pleas, demands, threats as they tore at clothes.
    She clawed at him, nipped as they rolled over the floor. His pulse was inside her, a savage beat that crashed against her own. The taste of him, the taste of herself, brewed together to saturate her.
    When he plunged into her she felt the urgent pumping of his blood, the desperate maze of his thoughts. Lost. She cried out, once, twice. They were both lost.
    She heard her name, his voice calling it inside her mind seconds before it burst from his lips. When he came inside her, dragged her with him, the glory of it made her weep.

20
    W ade had his hands full—what was left of them after the ornery tabby badly misnamed Fluffy mangled them during her shots. Maxine was deep into finals, and he’d given her the day off, which meant he had only two hands to pit against four claws and a number of very sharp teeth.
    He’d concluded, an hour before, that he’d made a mistake of horrendous proportions by springing Maxine. He’d started the day with an emergency that required a house call and put him solidly behind. Add the minor war in the waiting area set off by a personality clash between a setter and a bichon, the Olsons’